"Coincidentally,
large investors in the company chose to withdraw some stock from the
pool available to borrow, leaving short sellers wary they would be
forced to close positions and brokers working to find stock to lend. The
share price swiftly rebounded."

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

An outstanding puzzle in Finance is why conglomerates are traded at a discount relative to focused firms. While some academics say that the discount doesn't even exist, we (hopefully!) bring a new angle to this discussion.

We show that conglomerates have less dispersion of opinions than focused firms and face relatively fewer short sales constraints. These two effects partially explains why we observe a discount, being due to trading frictions.

Monday, July 13, 2015

So Greece accepted all conditions from the creditors. Is that a surprise to anyone other than the dreamers from the left that think money grows in trees?
The EU made many mistakes and could have avoided lots of pain to everyone involved, but dealing with deluded politicians on the Greek side caused even greater harm.
while is totally democratic that Greek citizens might not want the deal they offer,citizens from other countries can also democratically chose not to throw away money to a country that doesn't want to implement the painful reformss that are needed.
As usual in life, there is no free lunch.

Monday, July 6, 2015

I read this post with an interesting animated gif looking at US residential property values within each county in the US. Note how most of the value is concentrated in California and the Northeast. From what I read, this is an example of a cartogram. Cool.

It starts with a standard map where yellow means relatively cheap residential area, while the more red, the higher the value.

Friday, May 22, 2015

"To summarize: being a jerk is likely to fail you, at least in the long
run, if it brings no spillover benefits to the group; if your
professional transactions involve people you’ll have to deal with over
and over again; if you stumble even once; and finally, if you lack the
powerful charismatic aura of a Steve Jobs. (It’s also marginally more
likely to fail you, several studies suggest, if you’re a woman.) Which
is to say: being a jerk will fail most people most of the time."

Friday, April 3, 2015

Today I went to the movies with myself to watch the Dior and I movie, which I highly recommend everyone to see. I usually enjoy these documentaries regardless of whether it's the editing that convey all of the magic.

Nonetheless, I particularly liked it for two reasons:

i) It's always amazing to see geniuses working and the ups and downs of creative processes. You can almost see the sparkle in Ralf Simons' eyes when he has a good idea and the feeling of elation once he sees his creations finally being shown to the world.

ii) At the same time, you can clearly see the pressure he goes through to deliver on his first collection and the tight deadline he's working on.

All this made me think about the process of writing an academic paper. While no movie director could ever make the process of a research paper even remotely interesting, the sudden realization of a good idea or a good outcome of your statistical tests are amazing. The small pleasures that makes this profession rewarding. The feeling that you are probably the first person in the world to see those results is great.

Sunday, March 8, 2015

i) "Wages of Destruction" is an amazing book. I read it a few years ago and it has the best review of WW2 from an economic point of view I've read.

ii) Frum and De Long's analysis of how the British transitioned from no longer being a hyper power and the parallels to how the US should adjust to the likely emergence of China/India in the next 20-50 years are very interesting.